Building Your Course

Now that you have mapped out and designed your course on paper, it is time to build the various components.

A Typical Online Course Structure

The structure shown in this image is a typical online course structure. You can organize your course by modules, units, lessons, or weeks. Within each section of materials, you would typically see an Overview, Lectures (can be videos, live webinars, presentations, podcasts, or other forms you can dream of), Assignments (which can include resources, online discussions, activities, tasks, homework, etc.) and a quiz (whether you choose to have it graded or ungraded).

Students will visit the content area very frequently because it's the heart of the course. It is where they will find all of the most important information and learning materials.

What Happens To My Lecture?

Your online lecture may be presented in any of a variety of delivery formats including:

Video
Narrated PowerPoint
Graphics or Images
Audio & Video Clips
Interactive

It’s important to remember that no matter what the format—content is key. It’s not about flashy productions. It’s about involving and engaging students using the most suitable delivery format.

Your lecture can also take the form of a variety of activities—assignments, discussion forums, quizzes, exams, labs, practice exercises, case studies, and so on. So rather than one class-length lecture, you can cover the material using a variety of integrated activities (active learning).

Keep these best practices in mind as you consider the best format for your lectures:

Chunk Information: Keep segments short—5–7 minutes. A 1-hour lecture does not need to translate equally to any one online presentation. Consider instead, creating several shorter videos with one or more integrated activities.
Design presentations around learning objectives: Creating presentations that align with objectives ensures students that what you’re teaching is what they need to learn.
Accommodate different learning styles: Vary your presentations by including a variety of formats and activities, and use well-designed pages or slides that integrate text, pictures, diagrams, or other media to amplify and clarify your content.
Include assessments: Conclude each segment with a short assessment that helps determine if students are grasping the content.
Keep learners engaged: If you follow the four practices above, you’re well on your way to achieving this goal.

Examples

Video and Audio Clips

Course Introduction: Introducing yourself in a short video and providing key goals or concepts can go a long way into getting your students engaged from the very beginning.
Lessons/Lectures: Consider how much richer a lesson’s ‘lecture’ is showing salmon running the fish ladder, than showing, say, a still slide in the classroom.
Embedding audio directly in a lesson allows students to listen to correct pronunciations of technical terms or phrases, or listen to a podcast or interview.

Narrated Presentation

There are also other effective tools you can use that can engage students in the material. Consider a slide presentation combined with audio. You can make effective use of the narrated PowerPoint format through an engaging script and delivery, of your use of visuals, while focusing on one main topic.

Graphics and Copyright

Illustrate the content in a lesson, helping to break up the monotony of large blocks of text using images and graphics. We use Getty Images Links to an external site. for our image library.
Just know if you plan on reusing the content, you need to consider Copyright and Accessibility on all images and graphics.